# Anime Glasses Anime Glasses, also called Scary Shiny Glasses, is an anime and manga trope where a character's spectacles catch a bright glare that hides their eyes to signal scheming or intelligence. The visual jumped from screen to meme after a 2013 Tumblr photo edit by abosl and 2018 Twitter posts by @dekantsu built physical replicas. ## Overview Anime Glasses, also known as Scary Shiny Glasses, is an anime and manga trope in which a character's spectacles flare with a bright reflection that fully covers their eyes[1]. The blank white lenses signal that the character is calculating, scheming, or plainly villainous, and the effect is often paired with the character pushing the frames up their nose using an index finger[1]. Fans point to Gendo Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sōsuke Aizen from Bleach, and Professor Souichi Tomoe from Sailor Moon as textbook examples of characters drawn this way[5]. Outside anime itself, the visual moved into meme use as shorthand for someone with narrow but very deep expertise on a niche subject, usually paired with a caption bragging about that expertise[6]. ## How It Spread Video compilations helped push the trope beyond still images. On March 16th, 2017, the YouTube channel Anime Compilation uploaded a supercut of anime characters adjusting their glasses so the lenses flashed white[4]. Around the same time, YouTuber Benimetrix released a March 6th, 2017 sketch riffing on the reflection gag that drew over 57,900 views in two years[5]. The current photo format crystallized on September 24th, 2018, when Twitter user @dekantsu posted images of hand-built "plotting glasses" with reflective inserts, worn by himself and his friends[3]. The two tweets pulled over 186,000 and 24,000 retweets respectively in the six months that followed[5]. Redditors then adopted one of the @dekantsu photos as a reaction template for posts about hyper-specific knowledge, with several notable versions circulating in the r/me_irl-style communities[6]. The image gave the older anime trope a real-world stand-in that could be captioned as ordinary bragging about oddly narrow expertise[6]. ## How to Use Making an Anime Glasses image typically means either photoshopping a bright white glare across the lenses of a photo, as abosl did in 2013[2], or physically constructing glasses with reflective plastic inserts in the style of @dekantsu's 2018 build[3]. Captions usually claim deep but strangely narrow knowledge of a single topic, matching the Reddit convention for the format[6]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Anime Glasses? It is an anime and manga trope where a character's glasses catch light and reflect white, hiding their eyes to signal that they are intelligent, scheming, or villainous[1]. ### Where did Anime Glasses come from? The trope predates the meme by decades in anime such as Neon Genesis Evangelion and Bleach[5]. It was cataloged as "Scary Shiny Glasses" on TV Tropes on May 6th, 2006, and the meme photo format began with a June 15th, 2013 Tumblr post by user abosl[2]. ### What does Anime Glasses mean? The blank white lenses mean the character is plotting, calculating, or is an expert about to reveal a hidden power or plan[1]. Online, the meme version means the person in the photo has deep but very narrow expertise on a niche topic[6]. ### How do you use Anime Glasses? Either edit a bright white glare over the lenses of a photo, or build a real pair with reflective plastic like Twitter user @dekantsu did in his September 24th, 2018 posts[3], then pair the image with a caption boasting about a very specific area of knowledge[6]. ### Is Anime Glasses still popular? The @dekantsu photo saw wide sharing on Reddit as a reaction to posts about niche expertise[6], and the underlying trope is a familiar shorthand across anime and manga catalogued by trope-tracking sites[1]. ## References 1. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScaryShinyGlasses]() 2. [https://abosl.tumblr.com/]() 3. [https://twitter.com/dekantsu]() 4. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIrd5ax6Ggc]() 5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/anime-glasses]() 6. [https://www.reddit.com/r/meirl/]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/anime-glasses Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library